Word for Word/Covert Action; All the President Had to Do Was Ask; The C.I.A. Took Aim at Allende

By Tim Weiner

Published: September 13, 1998

WASHINGTON—
FROM 1970 to 1973, the United States sought to overthrow the Government of Chile and its democratically elected President, Salvador Allende, whom it deemed a Marxist threat to American interests. Under orders from President Richard M. Nixon, the Central Intelligence Agency mounted a full-tilt covert operation to keep Dr. Allende from taking office and, when that failed, undertook subtler efforts to undermine him. Those efforts ''never really ended,'' the C.I.A.'s director of operations at the time, Thomas Karamessines, later told Senate investigators.

Twenty-five years ago this week, on Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean military seized power, The junta, under Gen. Augusto Pinochet, ruled until 1990. Its death squads murdered more than 3,000 people, and it jailed and tortured thousands more. Chile is still trying to come to terms with the damage done to its democratic institutions.

The declassified Government documents excerpted below were collected by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group in Washington that has sought to uncover secret records since 1985. They were posted on its website (www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive) on Friday. They show how much the United States was committed to thwarting Mr. Allende even before he took office, and they illustrate a fact that was not well understood during the cold war: The C.I.A. very rarely acted as a rogue elephant. When it plotted coups and shipped guns to murderous colonels, it did so on orders from the President. TIM WEINER

United States Ambassador Edward Korry, in a cable titled ''No Hopes for Chile','' advised Washington on Sept. 8, 1970:

Civility is the dominant characteristic of Chilean life . . . And civility is what makes almost certain the triumph of the very uncivil Allende. Neither the President nor the Armed Forces have the stomach for the violence they fear would be the consequence of intervention.

The Ambassador followed up on Sept. 11 with a new cable, ''The Communists Take Over Chile.''

There is a graveyard smell to Chile, the fumes of a democracy in decomposition. They stank in my nostrils in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and they are no less sickening today.

On Sept. 15, Richard M. Helms, Director of Central Intelligence, took handwritten notes at a White House meeting with President Richard M. Nixon, Attorney General John Mitchell and the national security adviser, Henry M. Kissinger.

On Sept. 16, William V. Broe, chief of the C.I.A.'s Western Hemisphere division, met with Mr. Helms and other senior C.I.A. officers.

The Director [of Central Intelligence] told the group that President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him. The President authorized ten million dollars for this purpose, if needed. Further, the Agency is to carry out this mission without coordination with the Departments of State or Defense. . . . The Director said he had been asked by Dr. Henry Kissinger . . . to meet with him on Friday, 18 September, to give him the Agency's views on how this mission could be accomplished.

On Oct. 16, a cable went out from C.I.A. headquarters to Henry Heckscher, C.I.A. station chief in Santiago, Chile, who had doubts about the plots.

It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the United States Government and American hand be well hidden. . . . Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to press forward toward our [deleted] objective.

Plans were already in motion. Five days earlier, on Oct. 11, Mr. Broe sent this cable from C.I.A. headquarters to the Santiago station:

SUB-MACHINE GUNS AND AMMO BEING SENT BY REGULAR [deleted] COURIER LEAVING WASHINGTON 0700 HOURS 19 OCTOBER DUE ARRIVE SANTIAGO LATE EVENING 20 OCTOBER OR EARLY MORNING 21 OCTOBER.

The United States did not spur the Chilean military to act, but it was not for want of trying, as shown by an internal C.I.A. report, ''Chilean Task Force Activities,'' dated Nov.18.

On 15 September 1970, C.I.A. was directed to try to prevent Marxist Salvador Allende's ascent to the Chilean Presidency. . . . A military coup increasingly suggested itself as the only possible solution to the Allende problem. Anti-Allende currents did exist in the military and the Carabineros, but were immobilized by the tradition of military respect for the Constitution. . . . [The C.I.A.'s propaganda efforts included] special intelligence and ''inside'' briefings given to U.S. journalists. . . . Particularly noteworthy in this connection was the Time cover story which owed a great deal to written materials and briefings provided by C.I.A. . . . C.I.A. briefings in Washington [deleted] changed the basic thrust of the story in the final stages according to another Time correspondent. It provoked Allende to complain on 13 October, ''We are suffering the most brutal and horrible pressure, both domestic and international,'' singling out Time in particular as having ''openly called'' for an invasion of Chile.

Another report, ''Postmortem on the Chilean Presidential Election,'' by Mr. Helms to Gen. Alexander Haig, Mr. Kissinger's military aide, weighed the stakes.